Monday, November 19, 2007

 

You're doing it wrong!

Some things when driving irk me... Because there are people behind the wheel that shouldn't be, simply because they have no f'ing clue. Or to tell them more politely, "You're doing it wrong!"

Some examples I can think of today:
1. People who don't understand merging. There's a road that merges down to one lane. I try to follow the "let one car ahead rule" if I'm positioned far enough back where its easier to do so. (If enough people do this right - which seems to be rare, the zipper effect can actually come into play making merging actually go nicely.) So I slow down a bit to let the car over, since they're more in front. But what does the other person do? They start slowing down such that they don't clear. Hello? If that person should do anything, it's speed up a bit to give more space. About 4 seconds pass of this slowing down B.S. And the room for both lanes is starting to run out. Thus I figure the person is too damn clueless about the concept. So I'm thinking "F' it! If I get behind this person they're going to be a bit of a lamer in driving since they're already showing signs of it anyways." Thus flooring the gas to scoot ahead. I tried to start out nice, but because someone is just too dumb - I felt like I came off as a bit of an a-hole. Oh well!

2. Next are the people who don't know where to stop at an intersection. They're another annoying thing I've noticed when driving. It's not that hard to do it right. The solid line that goes across your half of the road is the "stop line". You line up your front wheels or bumper to the stop line when you stop at the intersection. The dashed lines going all the way across the intersection are crosswalks. You're not supposed to stop on those. But rather stop where you can see about a half-foot of space or so between the front of your vehicle and the crosswalk. Coincidentally, if you stop correctly at the stop line you also should clear the crosswalk properly. But what do I see? People too damn stupid to understand the difference between the two. Either it's someone stopped almost a car length behind the stop line (which can screw things up if there's a left turn lane involved.) or some jackass stopped on the crosswalk. (It's one thing to get up there if inching forward to see for a right on red, but consistently stopping on them is idiocy.) Remember if you stop on a crosswalk, you deserve to have your hood banged on in an urban environment. (You're in fact blocking the pedestrian right of way, so you're literally asking for it.)

3. People who cut corners when making turns. Just because you're making a left does not mean you should cross into the oncoming lane of the intersection. Widen that turn a bit, someone might be coming up from behind that bus there.

4. People who let other cars out of business parkways. Yeah, you might be trying to be nice. But in reality this act of what seems like kindness really makes you an asshole. (Sorry, but it's the truth!) First of all, that car you're letting out is going to be in the path of traffic. It's really bad when they're turning left and obstructing multiple lanes. The other part is that the person is coming out blind, creating a hazard. All it takes is another car coming by not noticing the gap you left and BAM! Thanks for the accident you just caused. Yeah it sucks to have to wait to get back on to the road in traffic, but there's plenty of precident and good reason why it's the car on the parkway that must yield to the traffic on the main road. Don't ever consider anyone's "act of kindness" unless you're going for a right or in a suicidal mood.

*If you haven't figured it out,I'm going with stateside rules btw. Figure it out if you're one of those backward driving island countries.

Friday, November 16, 2007

 

Eight dimensions...

Bored and pondering something... Some article about eight dimensional space possibly giving a clue to the theory of everything. So what eight dimensional sets could possibly be used to define anything thought of...

Spatial dimensions:
1. up-down (height)
2. in-out (depth)
3. left-right (width)
4. past-future (time)
Reaction dimensions:
5. light-heavy (mass)
6. attractive-repulsive (charge?)
7. inert-energetic (heat, relative velocities, spin, etc.)
8. nonresponsive - responsive (degree of being alive or conscious?)

The thing is that these dimensions can be thought of as nodes. Each node would contain a long array of potential values. Each value could then set drive relationships affecting all values in each node. And of course each node would respond in kind to what information is coming from the other nodes. Some other qualities we think of as unique might be a combination of nodes interacting such as inertia (mass + energy), gravity (mass + charge).

Also note that some dimensions could cancel out due to interactions with other nodes (maybe there's no anti-gravity because of an energetic relationship between mass and charge that zeros it?), and in other cases initially having a dimension of 0 could make just as much sense. (Ideas or memes can occupy time and energy, but no real space.) Likewise an idea that defines something could be made tangible by applying mass towards it. (Someone may think of a car, but there's no car until someone builds it.) But that's some of the craziness that makes up this universe. Who knows?

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Monday, November 12, 2007

 

Jet that sounds like a garbage can...

If anyone can tell me what kind of jet there is that makes a sound very much akin to the noise a heavy plastic garbage bin makes when dragged along a cement driveway, I'd be grateful. (Only difference from the dragging bin is although it seems no louder to the ears, you can feel it a little - some infra-sound thing going on.) It's gotta be one of the newest ones out there, and it'd be neat to find some pics. (Or at least speculate...)

Only other thing about it is that it's fast, and it's way up there. So unless you notice the noise (and don't actually look around to see that no neigbors are dragging out their garbage first) you're not likely to see it. It's fast enough that if you didn't look up to see the forming contrail, you'd think it's one that's already up there from a previously passing airliner. So it's pretty uber, whatever it is. Either it's up where the air is too thin to make much of a sonic boom, or somebody is further ahead in attenuating shockwave noise than they're letting on.

Maybe some aircraft enthusiast ever wanders by, they could elaborate or at least mention some similar experience.

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Friday, November 09, 2007

 

Dec 2012 an opportunity?

Provided various predictions about us blowing ourselves to smithereens is wrong, November - December of 2012 could be an opportunity to save our collective asses in 2029 or 2036 (depending on how some folks look at it.) At that time, the Apophis asteroid comes pretty close. (Around 0.112 AU) I think that would be close enough to put a probe on it that could nudge it in our favor. Or at least give us a signal to better track the path. Might be food for thought if any scientist types think it's worth trying.

Take a look at http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2004+MN4&orb=1 and play around while watching the dates. See what you think.

Hey whaddya know, after some more googling this site says the same thing.

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